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Bouygues Telecom to launch LoRa network dedicated to IoT

French operator Bouygues Telecom has announced it will roll out one of the first implementations of LoRa low-power WAN technology, which is designed specifically to support IoT connectivity, in France this June.

The LoRa alliance was first announced at CES at the start of this year and then formally unveiled at MWC 2015. The underlying technology was developed by French company Cycleo, which was acquired by US semiconductor company Semtech in 2012. The alliance is a bid to get a bunch of IoT players, including operators, to cooperate in order to implement the technology in the field.

The purpose of an IoT-specific wireless networking technology is primarily to be as low-power as possible. Many IoT implementations will be industrial, embedded use-cases where replacing power sources is expensive and impractical. LoRa claims this technology enables IoT device autonomy of up to ten years on a normal battery.

Bouygues has been trialling LoRa in Grenoble since 2013 and is ready for a nationwide rollout this summer, and expects 500 towns and cities to be covered by the end of the year. KPN, Swisscom, Belgacom and Fastnet are apparently all also in the process of deploying LoRa networks or carrying out large-scale trials.

“The Internet of Things is going to transform entire areas of our economy, said Olivier Roussat, Chairman and CEO of Bouygues Telecom. “Thanks to the expertise and the infrastructures of Bouygues Telecom, we will be able to quickly offer nationwide coverage with a high quality service.”

“The pilot scheme carried out with Bouygues Telecom is a world first that has enabled us to improve LoRa protocols further,” said Alain Dantec, SVP and GM of Semtech. “Its long-standing involvement in the development of our technology and its ceaseless work to improve it within the LoRa Alliance has made Bouygues Telecom one of the world’s leading experts in IoT technology.”

Here’s a list of IoT implemetations LoRa reckons its technology is good for:

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